Big Data to Avoid a Crisis

Many companies are laser-focused on how big data can boost their efforts to more effectively market their products and services and meet the needs of customers. But few are focusing on mining the deluge of data inside and outside their networks to predict and avoid various crises.

That’s the assertion of PricewaterhouseCoopers in a new series of videos.

“Regulators are increasingly using social media to investigate certain industries,” notes Sanjay Subramanian, PwC principal, in one video. “Litigators are increasingly using social media to investigate certain industries. The very information that you don’t focus on will be used against you by your regulators, by a litigator [or] by your competition when those crises occur.”

He points out that while the average tenure of a CEO is six years, a crisis – something that forces a company to veer off its strategy and could impact shareholders – typically occurs every four to five years.

In addition to the droves of information that companies store inside their networks, big data also encompasses everything being said about them online – in blogs, on social media and by news organizations, he notes in a second video. Because 90 percent of the world’s data has been created in the last two years, many companies can be overwhelmed about how to start efforts to tap big data for crisis management.

“Paint a picture of what is critical to an organization’s operations [and] try to identify areas within an organization that if there is a problem, it could really harm shareholder value, the brand of the organization and its key stakeholders for each of those areas,” Subramanian continues. “Start to focus on the pertinent data that could be collected to understand where there is a true risk in those areas, and build a process around that.”

PwC director Marissa Michel says that companies today must be more concerned than ever with their reputations because with the speed at which data and social media move there are no secrets anymore.

“Crises that companies thought they could avoid in the past just by keeping the lid on the crisis and not talking about it – that’s nearly impossible to do because you have eyes on you everywhere,” Michel adds in the third video.